Cat B 680 FAST™ is a member of a family of activatable fluorescent imaging agents comprising a novel architecture, termed F.A.S.T. (Fluorescent Activatable Sensor Technology) that confers an improved pharmacokinetic profile with a broader range of early imaging time points. This architecture also offers higher target specific signal with reduced background.

Cat B 680 FAST is a Cathepsin B activatable fluorescent agent that is optically silent upon injection and produces fluorescent signal after cleavage by Cathepsin B produced by inflammatory cells and tumor cells. Cat B 680 FAST may be used to monitor inflammation, tumor activity, progression of disease and the efficacy of therapeutic treatment in applications such as oncology, inflammation, cardiovascular disease and some neurological diseases.

Application Note

Current means of measuring disease in preclinical models of atherosclerosis include ex vivo assessment of disease tissues post-mortem and non-invasive imaging primarily of structural and anatomic features of lesions, in vivo. A non-invasive, quantitative means of imaging known biologic profiles associated with atherosclerotic disease, in vivo, would enable a robust additional understanding and analysis of disease progression and therapeutic response in research and drug development. We report the utility of the near infrared (NIR) protease-sensing, ProSense® 750 Fluorescent Pre-clinical Imaging Agent, in combination with the FMT® 2500 Quantitative Pre-clinical Imaging System for the non-invasive quantitative measurement of atherosclerotic disease biology and related response to therapy in apolipoprotein (apo) E-deficient mice in vivo. FMT (Fluorescence Molecular Tomography) imaging measured significant increases in aortic region protease activity with a range of values that were comparable to the range seen in the ex vivo aortic arches assessed by fluorescence reflectance imaging (FRI).

We have demonstrated the ability of our Fluorescence Tomography (FMT 2500) in vivo imaging system and ProSense 680 to non-invasively visualize and quantify inflammation in the lung in a robust and validated manner. The consistency of the quantitative tomography, as well as its excellent correlation with BAL assessment of eosinophilia, provide a powerful toolkit for quantifying the therapeutic efficacy of dexamethasone treatment. Utilizing new and existing imaging agents, FMT imaging in asthma research provides useful, non-invasive tools for understanding pulmonary inflammation and for developing new therapeutics in vivo.

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Technical Note

Cat B 680 FAST™ is a member of a family of activatable fluorescent imaging agents comprising a novel architecture, termed F.A.S.T. (Fluorescent Activatable Sensor Technology) that confers an improved pharmacokinetic profile with a broader range of early imaging time points.